Sydney Morning Herald columnist

For several years the second-most famous Aboriginal woman in Australia, after Cathy Freeman, was Nova Peris-Kneebone and her fame was greatly helped by her delightful name.

In 2001, she shed the Kneebone when she divorced Sean Kneebone, but later gained another lovely name, Nova Peris-Batman. She divorced Daniel Batman in 2011.

Given the nature of her sudden and spectacular elevation from being someone who was not even a member of the Labor Party to being Labor's senator-in-waiting for the Northern Territory, she warrants another great name: Nova Peris-Kneecap.

It was by a good, old-fashioned kneecapping that Senator Trish Crossin will lose the top position on Labor's Senate ticket for the Northern Territory in this year's federal election. Crossin had the local numbers but, tomorrow, on the Prime Minister's instruction, Labor's national executive will cripple her career and elevate Peris.

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Farewell, Senator Crossin, who will wonder why Julia Gillard did not move for a full year as scandal and disgrace enveloped another Labor MP, Craig Thomson, yet deemed Crossin very expendable very quickly.

Crossin made the mistake of being a public supporter of Kevin Rudd. That proved terminal after Labor suffered a meltdown in support from indigenous voters in 2012.

In last year's Northern Territory election, three indigenous women, Bess Price, Larisa Lee and Alison Anderson, won seats for the Country Liberal Party with huge swings, reflecting a seismic shift among indigenous voters.

If the vote in the NT election were repeated this year, Labor would lose a seat in the territory. Gillard cannot afford to lose a seat.

Because culture and politics is not monolithic among Aboriginal communities, Peris immediately felt the wrath of indigenous leaders in the NT Labor Party.

A former deputy chief minister, Marion Scrymgour, said she was considering nominating for Senate preselection in protest at the PM's conduct. Another indigenous former NT minister, Karl Hampton, described the elevation of Peris as a high-handed pre-emption of the NT party. A former chief executive of the Northern Land Council, Kim Hill, portrayed Gillard's intervention as a victory for celebrity politics over substance.

Peris, 41 and a mother of three, seems like a decent person but this has not stopped the smears emerging from within the Labor machinery.

Last weekend, reports appeared giving details of a drink-driving offence in 2008. Peris was stopped and booked by police in Canberra. No conviction was recorded. Her appearance in the ACT Magistrates Court was not reported. Yet the matter is now public, as is the fact that when Batman was killed in a car accident last year, alcohol was involved.

Another smear emerged with a leak that an investigation had been conducted into Peris's conduct in 2011-12 by the Northern Territory Department of Education and Training, following a claim that she had misappropriated funds spent on setting up a school for girls. The complaint proved to be unfounded.

Peris was even criticised last week for describing herself as a ''part-Aboriginal woman''. This self-description, though accurate, was dismissed, in print, as ''outmoded''.

The criticism was an example of the shameless bigotry that is tolerated in the name of indigenous identity in a society in which racial mingling should be embraced, not debased into categories of ethnic authenticity. The very terms ''Aboriginal'' and ''indigenous'' are increasingly being eroded and debased.

The first week of Peris's political life thus underlined why many successful people outside the party machines baulk at seeking public office. Politics has come to be dominated by machine operators. This applies on both sides of the political divide. Outsiders are not welcome.

None of this even represents the biggest potential problem Peris may have as the new face of Gillard's commitment to indigenous affairs.

After she retired from sport, Peris was hired to work as a ''treaty ambassador'' by the now-defunct Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. The job required her to travel the country, tax-funded, to campaign for a treaty that enshrined indigenous rights in the Australian constitution. This treaty idea was a lofty distraction from the real-world problems ATSIC faced with endemic corruption and incompetence.

ATSIC's failure served as both a metaphor and a warning to the dangers of racial separatism, but in 2010 Gillard commissioned a panel of indigenous advisers to draft amendments to the constitution that would formalise separate recognition for indigenous culture. After a year, the panel delivered its report at the end of 2011.

It over-reached. The panel drafted amendments that could not survive a referendum. One proposed amendment began, fatally: ''Acknowledging the need to secure the advancement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples …''

The good intent of this proposal was clear, but given the nature and the record of the infinitely litigious human rights industry it was a political blunder. The amendment would open an entirely new avenue for judicial activism and special pleading, based on the constitutional requirement to ''secure the advancement'' of indigenous Australians.

This proposal could potentially monetise race even further than it has already been monetised by an indigenous industry that has demanded, and spent, many billions of dollars while failing to achieve any meaningful improvement in the lives of the people who need help most.

Proposals for referendums do not survive public misgivings. Nonehave ever passed without bipartisan support. So Peris, whose most significant political role before Senator Crossin's kneecapping was her support for a race treaty, will have to confront the reality that the policies of separatism have done nothing to improve the lives of the most impoverished people in Australia, the communities of traditional Aborigines that are struggling to survive the indignities of a feudal system imposed by Canberra.